The CDC Gets the Trump Sharpie Treatment and Athletes on Strike

What I Learned Today – Thursday August 27

Athletes are protesting the police killings by refusing to play. There seems to be some confusion if the teams are striking for the rest of the NBA playoffs, or a few games. The Trump Admin seems to be treating this as shitty as you would expect them to:

Ryan Struyk @ryanstruyk

WH aide Jared Kushner: "The NBA players are very fortunate that they have the financial position where they’re able to take a night off from work.” VP chief of staff Marc Short: "In my mind, it's absurd and it's silly... If they want to protest, I don't think we care."

As a reminder, Jared earned his wealth the old fashioned way, by being spat out of a rich vagina.

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This is harsh, but fair:

Blake Pavey @BlakePavey

Response to this video has been absolutely insane! Cannot thank everyone enough! 4.5 Million views on TikTok! #COVID19 #covid #corona

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We can’t trust the CDC. It has completely bowed to Trump.  First, the head of the CDC admitted that he got pushed into going along with Trump’s plasma treatment and now the CDC has changed their testing guidelines claiming that testing is not needed on asymptomatic people.

Jake Tapper @jaketapper

CDC was pressured 'from the top down' to change Covid-19 testing guidance, official says - CNNPolitics

cnn.comCDC was pressured ‘from the top down’ to change coronavirus testing guidance, official saysA sudden change in federal guidelines on coronavirus testing came this week as a result of pressure from the upper ranks of the Trump administration, a federal health official close to the process tells CNN, and a key White House coronavirus task force member was not part of the meeting when the new…

And the timing of this is suspicious since Dr. Fauci was having surgery at the time:

Kaitlan Collins @kaitlancollins

Fauci tells @drsanjaygupta he was under anesthesia when task force met to discuss changing testing guidance. “I am concerned about the interpretation of these recs & worried it will give people the incorrect assumption asymptomatic spread is not of great concern. In fact it is.”

The thing I will take away from all this, if I survive 2020, is how quickly all of our institutions folded and went along with anything Trump said.

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This visitor had the decency to ring the doorbell:

(Do they live on a highway or something?  Those cars are screaming by.)

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Playing Flight of the Bumblebee on a toy piano at different tempos. Wow.

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This Washington Post story on how Trump is fleecing taxpayers with his trips to Trump-owned resorts is so infuriating:

Trump has now visited his own properties 270 times as president, according to a Washington Post tally — with another visit planned for Thursday, when he is scheduled to meet GOP donors at his Washington hotel.

Through these trips, Trump has brought the Trump Organization a stream of private revenue from federal agencies and GOP campaign groups. Federal spending records show that taxpayers have paid Trump’s businesses more than $900,000 since he took office. At least $570,000 came as a result of the president’s travel, according to a Post analysis.

Now, new federal spending documents obtained by The Post via a public-records lawsuit give more detail about how the Trump Organization charged the Secret Service — a kind of captive customer, required to follow Trump everywhere. In addition to the rentals at Mar-a-Lago, the documents show that the Trump Organization charged daily “resort fees” to Secret Service agents guarding Vice President Pence in Las Vegas and in another instance asked agents to pay a $1,300 “furniture removal charge” during a presidential visit to a Trump resort in Scotland.

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One million more Americans filed for unemployment last week. But stocks are doing well so nothing to see here?

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